Two giant pandas arrive in Atlanta on loan from China

Two giant pandas from China arrived in Atlanta on Sunday under a 10-year loan agreement announced during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, Zoo Atlanta said. Visitors will have to wait about a month to see them.

Ping Ping and Fu Shuang landed Sunday morning at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport aboard a dedicated FedEx Panda Express Boeing 777 aircraft, according to the zoo. The bears had departed earlier that day from Chengdu in southwestern China.

“This is a thrilling day for Zoo Atlanta and a historic moment for the City of Atlanta, the state of Georgia and beyond,” Raymond B. King, the zoo’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We are elated to welcome Ping Ping and Fu Shuang and could not be more excited about sharing that joy with our members, guests, city and community in the coming weeks.”

The pandas will spend about a month in quarantine in a biosecure area of the zoo’s new giant panda complex. Zoo officials have not confirmed a date when the public can see them.

Xi announced during a three-day summit with President Donald Trump in Washington that the pandas would arrive in Atlanta in the coming days. The loan was one of the few concrete outcomes of the visit, according to The Guardian, which reported that the leaders expressed goodwill but did not resolve longstanding differences between their countries.

Zoo Atlanta has participated in a giant panda agreement with China for more than 25 years. It said farewell to its last pandas in 2024, leaving the zoo without the bears until Sunday’s arrival. The new agreement was announced in April, though no arrival date was given at the time.

Both new arrivals were born in 2020 and lived at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Ping Ping is male and has dark black circles around his eyes. Fu Shuang is female and has a slightly protruding forehead, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency.

China has long used panda loans as gestures of goodwill in its relations with other countries and has allowed agreements to lapse when tensions arise. Xi described the loan program as an example of “friendship between the Chinese and Americans.”

Zoo Atlanta joins two other U.S. zoos with giant pandas. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and the San Diego Zoo both received pandas from China in 2024.